O, Solo Mio!

Some days--heck, some lives--can be transformed in a matter of minutes. And so it was that my own Friday--if not my life--was blessedly scrubbed clean yesterday during the low-hum mayhem that is library lunch duty.

Absent of the 1 p.m. dance fests that used to frame a Friday in the library (my friend and dance partner Genny now stationed in another room in the school), perhaps we were all in need of a little musical interlude.

Enter Paul, my secret crush who, simply by wending his smiling way through the throngs of lunching, munching, ever-bunching students, can put a kick in my step. By the way, if you have never seen a librarian with a kick in her step, then you are missing something big.

Then again, if you have never met Paul, whom I've written about before, then you are missing something even bigger.

Paul's five-minute lunchtime visit with me included pieces of our usual routine: he immediately picked up the due-date stamper and inked up his hand with the designation "Dec. 03, 2011" and we joked about his upcoming due date. Then, he helped me check out a few books to other students, including Natalie, a student new to East whom, if a teacher were apt to have her favorites, would make my own top-ten list. I mean, if a teacher did that sort of thing. . . .

Then Paul, listening to Natalie and me discuss the opera she attended earlier in the week, threw me for a musical loop. Threw everyone within earshot for a musical loop.

He broke into song. Not just a top-forty, heard-it-on-the-radio song, though. No, Paul broke out into an operatic piece.

In Italian.

Did I mention that Paul receives Special Education services at East High? Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of what that word "special" really means. . . .

Eyes closed, head pointed upward, Paul released an oddly affecting tremolo from his lips, the words framed in Sicilian roots and sung with ease.

It was like one of those experiences that I hear supreme athletes have from time to time, in which the moments stretch out far beyond the tick of the second hand, each unraveling in slo-mo, our attention riveted to the unfolding.

Natalie, who, in her former school, had a bit of a reputation for being an impatient rabble-rouser, let a slow, appreciative smile stretch across her ebony face, mesmerized by this impromptu performance.

Such is the transformative power of Josh Grobin, I guess, whom Paul acknowledged for teaching him the song.

(My God! Paul even cited his sources! What's not for this librarian to love about him?!)

And then, the bell rang. Kids logged off of their computers, put away their chess games, pushed in their chairs and began heading for their next class, some stopping to pat Paul on the back.

And me?

Well, I just stood there, dumbfounded and utterly happy. Basking in the afterglow of Paul's aria, transformed.